


the day you departed

by furrybarista



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Reveal, There's some swearing btw and a little bit of minor cuts and scrapes but nothing huge, i dont know what to tag this with, it was fun to write!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-03-08 09:10:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18891556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/furrybarista/pseuds/furrybarista
Summary: After Ladybug discovers Hawk Moth's true identity, Chat Noir questions his loyalty to her when he finds her with his father's life in her hands.





	1. 1

Ladybug held onto him by his collar, his thin frame surprisingly lightweight for his height. She could feel her nails digging into the palm of her hand from how tight she held him. 

“I’ve waited this for a long time, Hawk Moth,” she said, spitting out his name with venom. “You make me sick, you son of a bitch.” He struggled for breath beneath her grip, and grasped her wrist weakly with both hands. Ladybug curled her fist tighter around the collar of his suit. The blood pumped in her ears. She willed herself not to tremble as she held him up before her. 

“You don’t know anything about me or what I’m doing, you nasty insect,” he growled under his breath. “Give me that miraculous now or there will be hell to pay.”

“You’re kidding yourself. I can’t believe you have the nerve to say that to me when I have you up here like this. Don’t you ever give up?” she whispered, cautiously keeping him at arm’s length. His fingers reached weakly for her earrings.

She felt powerful. Adrenaline raced through her, tingling at her fingertips. She had him right where she had always wanted him, and now, knowing who he was, his defeat was going to go so much smoother. 

“Hand over your miraculous now, Hawk Moth, or shall I say, Gabriel Agreste?” 

At that moment she heard footsteps and turned. There stood Chat Noir, but something felt … different about him. There was something wrong and while she couldn’t put her finger on it, a sense of impending trouble tugged at her heart. 

“What are you doing?” he screamed from where he stood. His face flashed with anger, and Ladybug felt a hint of raw fear crawl up her throat. His feline eyes were pinpoints, far from the dilated, warm look they normally took on. He looked so desperate- They had waited for this moment for so long. What was he talking about? Before she could even begin to say her partner’s name, he interrupted her. “Let my father go.” 

Your father? She felt her stomach drop, but she kept her grip tight around the man’s neck. Her eyes flashed back to him briefly. Hawk Moth’s eyes were different, she could have sworn, becoming softer, even, for a moment, but that was gone almost immediately, and with a crushing realization, she felt his foot in her side. The cobblestone road of the narrow alley rushed up to her face before she could throw her hands in front of her, and she felt her face dig into the stone. She winced as she stood up, moving as quickly as she could without looking defeated.

“Wait- Chat, please, we’ve been waiting for this for so long,” she tried to mask her disappointment. “We’ve been waiting for this, I was trying to get his miraculous back so we could finally have some peace! So that Paris would be safe, and we could move on. So you and I could move on.”

She pushed herself off the ground with one hand and shakily straightened herself, brushing her hair away from her mask. There was no return to her call, but rather, she was greeted with silence in the alleyway. She felt significantly emptier than she had a few minutes ago. Adrien? All this time it was him? The blonde boy in her class… his handsome face and soft light hair and … was it really the charismatic cat she’d taken for a lovesick fool this whole time? She shook her head as if to rid herself of those thoughts. She needed to find him immediately and right now it didn’t matter who he was. Time felt slowed. This was seriously not happening right now- not to her. This had to have been some kind of dream. Maybe, she thought with a crushing blow to her spirit, she was akumatized right now and just wasn’t in the mental space to comprehend it. Her thoughts swirled around in her head.

“Milady!” 

Oh thank goodness, she thought with relief at the sound of Adrien’s voice, looking up towards the roof of the quaint apartment building before her; but what she saw was not what she wanted. There he stood, and yes it was absolutely him -- but this time, his suit gleamed with white in the light of the moon. This was not her chaton, she thought with despair, bending her knees and twirling her yoyo in front of her, creating a divide between them. She bit at her bottom lip. This wasn’t Adrien either.

Before she could breathe, he was already in front of her, swinging his baton at her side.  
“No!” she blurted out before she could stop herself, matching him in combat. She hit him over and over with a combination of moves harder than she ever had before, kicking and punching as fast as she could, but he returned every move, and with more force. She grunted as his ankle made contact with her shoulder. He was a good fighter, she thought, taking herself back a few steps. This was making it harder and harder to match him, let alone defeat him. She glanced at his ring, his miraculous- it glowed with the obvious signature magenta of the akuma. Ladybug kept her shield up, backing away slowly, trying to buy herself time to think. She had to get that ring off of his delicate claws? No akumatized villain, let alone herself, had ever accomplished that. She wheezed as another blow from his baton made contact with her ribs. This was making itself out to be a lot more difficult than she anticipated, and a crushing realization dawned on her. All that time they spent fighting together had only made him that much stronger. He caught on every move she had and matched it because he always knew what was coming; this had made them so much stronger as a team, but as rivals it made him powerful and completely ruthless. 

Before she could stop him he was up in her face again, and with a swift, forceful push to both her shoulders she collapsed to the ground. She reached behind her with both her hands and shuffled back, only for him to kick her to the cobblestone walk. She felt the blow draw the breath from her body and laid motionless beneath his foot on her chest bone. 

“Please…” she wheezed, struggling to get his foot off of her with her other arm. She couldn’t wait now. “Lucky charm!” 

She shouted it with all she had left in her as she laid beneath his foot, feeling utterly desperate. She’d given it all she had- there had to be something, anything to help her. Ladybug squeezed her eyes shut. A few seconds passed, and nothing came. Nothing was deposited in her hands. She opened her eyes, and blinked, staring at her empty palms. Fuck.

“Ha! What good was that, bugginette,” he said between gritted teeth, the nickname coming out as a harsh mockery of what once was. The air in her chest felt hot and constricted. Her brain felt completely scattered. Without her lucky charm, Ladybug was utterly useless. The harshness of the situation felt especially painful as she laid there under his foot. She bit her bottom lip, feeling tears rush to her eyes before she could stop them. She was out of options. The wonderful lady luck was out of options and she was going to lose. 

“Adrien…” she whispered, trying to pry him off of her with both hands now. “I’m not Adrien, I’m Chat Blanc!” he hissed at her through his teeth. The tears streamed down her face, feeling hot against her cheeks. She felt her hands go clammy.

“Adrien please,” she said again, this time more firm. “I … I promise if you just… get off of me… we can talk about this.”

She choked through her sentences, coughing up the words one at a time. His gaze was cold and intense, staring deep into her eyes, unafraid. The crushing realization that she was losing her friend and partner lingered in the back of her mind now more than ever. She kept crying as she talked, making her speech feel jumbled. She felt so desperate. Her fingers clawed at his ankle and she tried to ignore the fact that she was trembling. 

“I want to talk about this with you,” she whispered, feeling weaker by the second. “I love you so much. I never wanted to hurt you. This is just another obstacle we have to get over. We always get over all of the stuff that gets in the way.” she paused and inhaled, using one gloved hand to wipe the tears from her heavy eyes. “We’re Ladybug and Chat Noir, remember? You’re my partner and we’re a team. I love you. Please don’t let this be what becomes of us.”

“You never loved me,” he replied, his voice flat. She watched his eyes flicker for a moment. “If you loved me you wouldn’t have done that to me.”

His breathing became steadily more erratic. “You just wanted to use me to get to him. You didn’t care if I was Adrien or not because it didn’t even stop you from going through with it. You’re in this for you. Not for me. I regret everything.” 

Her face fell and her voice broke.  
“You know that’s not true,” she said. Before she could finish, he interrupted her. 

“Cataclysm.” he mumbled, in the same flat tone. Ladybug fought back a scream from rising up her throat. His hand swirled with inky black, crawling up his arm like a snake. 

“Goodbye, Lady Luck,” he whispered, resting himself on one knee, with the other foot poised over her chest bone. He raised a claw to her face and she felt the cool breeze of the cataclysm rush up her skin. A breath barely escaped her lips. She squeezed her eyes shut and took a shaky, slow breath in. One last chance to make this right.

“Adrien,” she sighed, her voice soft with defeat. She placed her hand on his cheek and he lifted his cataclysm away from her briefly in surprise. “I know you don’t want to do this. Listen to your heart. Not your head. You do that all the time anyways, remember?” Her lips parted in a small smile, and his eyes widened a little at the sight of it. “Chat always wears his heart on his sleeve, remember?”

Now, she thought, anchoring herself firmly with both hands onto his shoulders. He yelped in surprise as she brought both legs beneath her and with a swift, fluid movement, kicked his body behind her, his cataclysm crashing into the ground behind her and crumbling the sidewalk.

“Yes!” she couldn’t help but exclaim aloud. Using as much of her momentum as she could, she sprung onto him from behind, ripping the baton from his hands before he had the chance to tighten his grip around it. He looked at his empty palm in shock and turned to her to spring forward but by the time he managed to do so, the baton was in two pieces over her knee. The akuma fluttered out, glistening purple in the moonlight, and she caught it with her yoyo in one fluid exchange. Her breathing was heavy.

“Miraculous ladybug!” she whispered. The phrase felt particularly weighted on her tongue today. In front of her, the suit he wore faded from white to its signature black, from his toes and up through the ears. They flickered as they darkened and his green eyes returned to their warm roundness, his pupils shrinking a little when he saw her standing there, bloodied and bruised. His face fell and his head leaned forward in concern. He extended a hand towards her. 

“Milady, what-” 

Before he could finish, she had already sprung into his arms, choking out a sob. She pulled him close, the warmness of his skin against her cheek feeling familiar. Like home. Her fingers found their way up his back through his soft hair. She was lost for words. His eyes were wide with shock but he stayed quiet, instead carefully placing both of his arms around her shoulders. Ladybug could not stop the tears from rolling down her face, her smile glowing with relief. Chat Noir stood quietly where he was, looking equally as confused as a moment ago. He brought one hand to her face, strumming her earring with his clawed thumb.

“Ladybug,” he said under his breath, his face hot from embarrassment from her being this close to him. “Your miraculous is blinking. You’d better get going or that thing’s going to detransform you.” 

She looked up at him wordlessly for a moment before pulling him closer. Chat felt his shoulders rise up in surprise as she wrapped both arms around him. Before he had the chance to push her away, bits of her spotted costume began to fall from her, loose scales of red and black. She let it happen. 

“Marinette?”


	2. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chat Noir gets his point of view after being akumatized. Ladybug has the unfortunate duty of letting him know what exactly went wrong in the last hour. Hawk Moth is nowhere to be seen. Things are revealed. More things, if that's even possible.

Chat Noir looked down at his fingertips, stunned to see the blue haired heroine completely detransformed in front of him. His brain was still foggy, but he remembered clearly the look on her face when she saw him, unlike any he’d seen from her before. It was a look of understanding, of knowing. And it left Chat with an empty kind of confusion. His eyebrows met as he thought about it, holding her close with both hands. He felt oddly normal doing this, like back when they met on the night Ladybug stood him up. He straightened slightly. On the night that Marinette as Ladybug stood him up. He looked down at her again. She was still lost within whatever had happened moments ago. 

Then, it dawned on him, slowly but surely as he stood there and he inhaled, feeling nervous. It happened -- it had to have happened. There was no one around who would have been akumatized, and his memories felt like a low hanging cloud. Present, but not tangible. His worst fear had come true. He must have submitted to the akuma and betrayed her. A feeling of dismay washed over him. He suddenly felt sweaty and uncomfortable under her body weight.

“Marinette,” he said quietly. He tried to keep his voice from breaking.   
“What happened to me?”

She looked up at him, her tears drying on her face from a couple of minutes ago. Her eyes were soft with compassion. Chat Noir stood uncomfortably in her arms, feeling exceptionally hot underneath the suit. What about this was so different? She was his Ladybug. He didn’t understand why this was suddenly so difficult. His eyes widened as her hand came up to meet his face, fingers tracing the outline of his neck. She was completely, totally unafraid of him, and that stunned him for what it was worth. Marinette was always shy, what was with the change of heart? She was not the clumsy Marinette who tripped over her own words, not right now. He felt confused at the transformation of character that appeared to happen in front of his very eyes.

“I need to explain some things,” she said quietly. Her eyes flickered with something he didn’t quite recognize. “And I need you to promise me that you’ll be okay when I tell you what really happened because I almost lost you to a mistake I made, but it’s important that you know.”

A long sigh escaped her and she placed both hands on his shoulders, standing back from him. She held him firmly under her palms. 

“I want to talk about this somewhere else,” she said, her gaze wandering behind him. “Where there’s less people around to overhear.”

In a couple of moments, it was all familiar again. Just the two of them on her balcony, Marinette in her full self. He was still fully suited, having not used the cataclysm. The empty silence hung between the two of them, and above the bakery occasional noises could be heard from the street. He could remember when it was not that long ago that he was up on this balcony for different reasons, but it didn’t feel as melancholic this time around. He broke the silence first. Partially out of fear for it lasting too long. 

“Marinette,” he breathed, his voice hardly more than a whisper. “You’re… You’ve been all this time?”

She didn’t answer, but brushed the dark hair from her face, her earrings glittering under the light of the street lamp. It was enough of an answer for him, but even with logic, the knowledge still rattled him to the core. They stood in stunned silence for a few more minutes.

“Adrien,” she said. He felt his eyes widen at the sound of his name. 

“You knew too,” he said. In the seriousness of the moment, he tried to hide his utter happiness at hearing his name from the lips of someone he had loved for years. His name, not an alias. Everything. All of him. “You knew all this time?”

She shook her head and looked at the ground below, arms delicately folded over the wrought iron rail. It was a couple of long moments before she answered, like she was trying to decide what to say. 

“Tonight I was walking home from Alya’s place. I was on my way back when I heard something. And I never picked up on Hawk Moth’s voice so fast,” she began to explain. Her nervousness was obvious. Her fingers turned a wisp of hair between them as she spoke. “But I did, I heard him and I saw him. So I traced him to where he was going and he turned the corner. And the next thing I knew I wasn’t looking at Hawk Moth anymore.”

He couldn’t help but let his eyes wander to her lips as she spoke. Something changed in her expression and she covered her face with her hands. When she lifted them off again, her eyes were wet with tears again. 

“Hey, no, no, no,” he said softly, coming up behind her from where he stood to her left. He ran his thumb over her face to brush them away and she let him, wordlessly. 

“I was looking at your father of all people,” she breathed. He felt his heart stop for a brief moment. “So I followed him and when he transformed again I made a mistake. I was angry and I tried to stop him with violence.” 

It sounded like the last words had to be choked out. Adrien kept his hands where they were, under her chin as she turned to face him, looking up at him with eyes full of despair. 

“And that’s when you saw me,” she continued, sounding exhausted. “And you saw me trying to do something to someone you only recognized as your blood.” 

She looked up at him, no doubt remembering what they had gone through that day. He couldn’t stop running his fingers over the edge of her face. She reached up to stop him by grasping his wrist with her hand and he paused. 

“I must have made a mistake,” he admitted under his breath, reaching up with the other hand to rub the back of his neck. “I don’t know what to do right now. What can I do? He no doubt knows who I am now, too.”

Marinette put her hands on his neck with the gentlest touch he’d probably ever experienced and pulled herself closer to him. He allowed her to, the comfort of his suit making it feel less awkward. He was still Chat. The brave part of him was still here, he reminded himself. 

“I thought I’d lose you.” she said. Her voice sounded like it was shaking. 

Adrien tried to let that thought sit in his mind for a moment. The thought that their team could have been broken apart forever in one night. He didn’t really want to think about that. He returned her embrace and let her sink into him for a couple of moments. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered back as they stood there together, wrapped in the warmth of each other. “I’m so sorry. I wish it could have gone differently. I don’t want to scare you.”

She looked up at him with her glassy eyes and he returned her gaze. They spent a long moment just sharing eye contact with mutual understanding of each other. Knowing who they were, under the mask, too. For each of them. 

“I hope I didn’t say anything hurtful,” he said carefully.   
“You did,” she answered.

The silence hung low over them for a moment, tension between them feeling like the humidity of a hot summer wind. 

“I was under the akuma,” he ventured, feeling guilty.   
“I don’t remember what I said or how I said it.”

Before he could finish, Marinette interrupted him. 

“Is it true,” she asked, careful and articulate about each word. “Chat Noir, Adrien Agreste, both and neither. Is it true that you regret knowing me?” 

Inside him, he felt his heart tear away at her words. He spoke up quickly.  
“No,” he said simply. “I don’t regret anything except for being akumatized. I regret that. But knowing you and calling you my partner and my best friend? I don’t regret anything, not in the slightest.” 

The words came to him easier as he spoke.   
“Since I met you, my world changed, my lady. At home and at school, I felt myself crumbling under the weight of carrying everything that I was expected to take. My father at home, my mom’s disappearance. Expectations from my friends on how I was supposed to act.” 

His fingers found their way into her hair again and she didn’t object. 

“Ladybug never expected any of that from me. We jumped in together and she was okay with me making decisions and taking initiative. She didn’t try to carve me into something I wasn’t, or fit into boxes that weren’t made for me.” 

He paused for a moment.

“You,” he whispered, pulling her face towards him with his hands, relishing in the fact he had the love of his life between them. “You were amazing and confident, and so smart and beautiful,” his voice lingered on that last word and a blush crept onto her unmasked face. “And you accepted me instantly for everything I was and you didn’t even know me. And that’s more than I’ve gotten from anyone in my whole life.”

Marinette slipped her hands behind his neck and he felt himself lose his mind a little bit at her touch. He never expected this. Not in a million years. The corners of her mouth turned up in a smile as she stared up at him. 

“I can’t believe it was you this entire time,” she whispered to him. Her voice was quieter than ever. He had to lean over more to hear her words but he hung onto every one of them like a lifeline. “All this time and I was falling in love with one person.”

Adrien felt his entire soul crushed under the weight of what she just said. It took him practically a full minute to recover before answering her.

“Falling in love with one person?” he echoed. “You mean you were…”   
“I am.” she responded.

He melted into her and pulled her as close as possible, resting his head on hers, his hands tangled up in her hair again. From there his voice echoed in the evening air, hardly more than a whisper. 

“I love you too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUGHH HEY GUYS thank you for reading again. I wanted to include more chapters on top of the first fic because I had such a good time with it, so here is part TWO! so much fluff I'm dying over here.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! So just a quick note because I wanted to address this: one, if I can get enough inspiration *yes* there will be a second part to this. And two, thank you so much for reading! This is my first fanfic and I appreciate the support so much :)
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43xNZhmfjTE
> 
> I listened to this while writing and it inspired the title! maybe it can inspire you too.


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